City of Warwick v. Robalewski
| Decision Date | 28 April 1978 |
| Docket Number | No. 76-213-M,76-213-M |
| Citation | 120 R.I. 119,385 A.2d 669 |
| Parties | CITY OF WARWICK v. Henry W. ROBALEWSKI. P. |
| Court | Rhode Island Supreme Court |
On April 22, 1976, the petitioner, Henry W. Robalewski, then just short of his eighteenth birthday, was found to be a delinquent and wayward child by a judge of the Rhode Island Family Court. Sentencing was deferred until May 6, pending a report from the probation officer and at that time Henry was committed to the Rhode Island Training School for Boys for a period of 6 months with 3 of them suspended. Henry thereupon filed in the Family Court a notice of appeal and a motion for release pending appeal. The motion was denied, but was renewed in this court, ostensibly under authority of our Rule 9 providing for release in criminal cases pending appeal. We treated the motion as a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, in accord with the provisions of G.L. 1956 (1969 Reenactment) § 14-1-53, and granted the petition on June 10, 1976. 1
In granting the petition we ordered that Henry's commitment be stayed pending determination of his appeal, and we directed counsel to brief the question of whether a juvenile has a right to bail pending appeal an issue presented here and in a companion case which we also decide today. In re Alfred, No. 77-354-A, 385 P.2d 673 (R.I., filed April 28, 1978).
Since Henry is no longer in custody, we shall now treat his petition as an appeal from the Family Court's denial of his request for bail.
The offense which led to Henry's adjudication as a delinquent child was the alleged possession of stolen goods. A stolen camera was found in his room by officers of the Warwick Police Department in the course of a search for stolen goods, and it is the seizure of this camera by the police that Henry is challenging on appeal. Henry claimed to have bought the camera from one Francis Andrews a man who was known to the police and who had left the state and could not be located at the time of trial and Henry subsequently produced a "bill of sale" as evidence of the sale. At a hearing before a justice of the Family Court on April 22, 1976, the signature on the alleged bill of sale was compared by the court with Andrews' signature on both a bail bond and a fingerprint card and were found to be strikingly dissimilar. The judge stated that he found Henry to be guilty of the possession of stolen goods beyond a reasonable doubt and ordered him committed to the Rhode Island Training School for Boys.
This was not Henry's first appearance in the Family Court. He was first referred at the age of 10 on a charge of breaking and entering and had appeared in court on numerous subsequent occasions, but, insofar as the record indicates, this appears to have been the first time that he was ordered removed from the custody of his mother and stepfather and sent to the Training School. It is that action by the Family Court which brings him before us on appeal and on petition for the writ of habeas corpus.
We consider first the question which we directed counsel to brief: Does a juvenile have a right to postadjudication bail pending appeal?
Ours is a negative response because no one, adult or infant, has a constitutional right to postconviction or, if you will, postadjudication bail.
The right to bail is not within the safeguards of the United States Constitution for the simple reason that the only reference to bail in the Federal Constitution is to be found in the eighth amendment. The sole mandate of the eighth amendment is an order that, if bail is to be set, it shall not be excessive. Bail in the federal system is statutory in origin:
"From the passage of the Judiciary Act of 1789, 1 Stat. 73, 91, to the present Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, Rule 46(a)(1), federal law has unequivocally provided that a person arrested for a non-capital offense shall be admitted to bail." Stack v. Boyle, 342 U.S. 1, 4, 72 S.Ct. 1, 3, 96 L.Ed. 3, 6 (1951).
and the eighth amendment directs only that if bail is accorded it shall not be excessive.
Rhode Island's Constitution also contains a prohibition against excessive bail. R.I.Const. art. I, § 8. However, article I then goes on to make bail a matter of right when in § 9 it says:
"All persons imprisoned ought to be bailed by sufficient surety, unless for offenses punishable by death or by imprisonment for life, when the proof of guilt is evident or the presumption great."
In Quattrocchi v. Langlois, 100 R.I. 741, 744, 219 A.2d 570, 572 (1966), we pointed out that this constitutional guarantee is applicable solely to pretrial bail and that it "does not confer a right to bail pending appeal from a conviction." Postconviction bail, we said, is a matter which is directed to the trial justice's discretion. Id. at 747, 219 A.2d at 574.
Thus, neither the federal nor the state constitution mandates postconviction release on bail pending appeal.
Rule 46 of the Superior Court and the District Court Rules of Criminal Procedure declare that a defendant "may be admitted to bail after conviction pending appeal." In State v. Abbott, 113 R.I. 430, 322 A.2d 33 (1974), we referred to some of the factors that should be evaluated when postconviction bail is being sought. They are (1) the substantiality of the grounds of appeal, (2) the potentiality of release posing a threat to the community, (3) the petitioner's ties to the community, and (4) other circumstances, such as the severity of the sentence which might indicate there is a risk that the petitioner might flee the jurisdiction. Id. at 432, 322 A.2d at 35.
The General Assembly by its enactment of § 14-1-53 has fashioned a device which provides for postadjudicatory release by way of habeas corpus to this court. While this statute affords the juvenile with something which is similar to postconviction bail, the Legislature has given us a task for which we are ill equipped. Petitions for release under § 14-1-53 usually require the consideration of certain factual issues. Such determinations can best be done, and in all other comparable situations are done, in a trial court. We see no reason why the Family Court should not be permitted to exercise the same discretion that is being exercised in the other trial courts pursuant to their respective Rule 46. The criteria to which we alluded in State v. Abbott may be just as relevant in deciding the advisability of postadjudicatory release of a "wayward or delinquent" juvenile as when postconviction bail release is being sought by an adult. The Family Court might well invoke the Abbott standards as it seeks to strike a proper balance between the juvenile's welfare and the public safety.
While we recognize that the court's function is to apply and give effect to the law as enacted by the Legislature, Westminster Corporation v. Zoning Board of Review, 103 R.I. 381, 401, 238 A.2d 353, 364 (1968) (Joslin, J., dissenting), we suggest, with regard to a juvenile's right to bail, as we did in another context on an earlier occasion, that "(i)f the matter is called to the attention of the legislature it may be persuaded to make the necessary amendment to the statute to provide such a right." Moretti v. Division of Intoxicating Beverages, 62 R.I. 281, 286, 5 A.2d 288, 290 (1939).
Having decided that a juvenile does not have a right to bail pending appeal, we now turn to a consideration of the search and seizure issue raised in petitioner's appeal itself.
As mentioned, Henry was found wayward and delinquent for possession of a camera stolen in a housebreak. The camera was admitted into evidence over Henry's objection. It was found in Henry's bedroom by two police detectives who were investigating another housebreak. Detective William Morgan testified that he and the other investigating detective were given permission to enter the bedroom by Henry's stepfather, the owner of the house. Detective Morgan stated that before entering the house he informed the stepfather of his constitutional rights and that the stepfather signed a waiver of rights and consent to search form. 2
The detectives spotted the camera on the floor of the bedroom. Detective Morgan picked it up, opened the case, saw a name other than Henry's inside, and took the camera believing that it might have been stolen. The police later found that the camera had in fact been stolen.
Contrary to what the city of Warwick's brief...
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